


The Misadventures of DC & MJ

by tcrobson



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Friendship, Male Friendship, Mild Language, Other, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 03:19:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8128399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tcrobson/pseuds/tcrobson
Summary: A multi-chapter story originally published on David-Cook.org and WhatsYourFiction.com in 2008 of high-jinks between season 7 American Idol winner David Cook and his now-deceased friend Michael Johns. I could no longer find this series anywhere on the internet — it now only exists in printed form — so, because I was really proud of it and wanted to honor Michael's life and celebrate David's success, I thought I'd give the stories a new home here.





	1. Don't Look Into The Light

Originally Published: May 16, 2008  
Top 24 Contestants  
Theme: 1960s

 

"I'm telling you, mate — the light is flickering!"

David Cook was not convinced. He had stood there in the middle of the much-frequented backstage red room, staring intently at the ceiling strip light in anticipation of this flicker Michael Johns spoke of. David didn't really care about the flicker, as he had a 1960s song performance to prepare for for the first official voting night of _American Idol_ , and the majority of the other top 12 male contestants had come and gone in several states of ready.

Truthfully, Michael didn't care either — he was just so fascinated that David couldn't see such an obvious visual glitch. David's determination to spot this troublesome light dimming is what kept Michael glued to his spot beside the fellow rocker, all the while munching down on a smooth, red apple.

"There is no flicker, Michael! I've been standing here for ten minutes looking at this light and it's been consistently lit the whole time!"

The kiddish smile on Michael's face made David suspect that all this hassle was just a lot of bull, but Michael persisted with his claim regardless.

"It's there! How can you miss it? Do you Missourians blink more slowly or something?"

Oh, they had had this discussion before, the ol' Australians versus Americans fiasco. The tattooed Irish chick Carly Smithson didn't help matters much, especially when the art of beer-drinking came up. But once they had put their international differences aside, Michael and David seemed to really hit it off like old chums. Despite the fact that they were technically in competition with each other, they found it relieving to have at least one good buddy in all of the disorienting chaos. And you can always use a good friend when trying to sing a sixties song. The pair were about to find that out the hard way.

But it couldn't be as hard as trying to see the flicker of this blasted light.

"It's not there, Mike. It's not! You're seeing things. You're just imagin..."

Michael was no longer next to him. He was alone in the room, hearing only echoes from the studio speakers on stage.

"Damn it, Michael...I swear..." David raced through the doorway to the room, heading in the general direction of the sounds. Luckily, he caught a quick glimpse of Michael flashing a goofy grin in his direction. After catching up to him and the rest of the guys, he delivered a quick slap against the back of Michael's head and hit the stage, the white bandanna scarf in his back jean pocket fluttering behind him.

 

_An hour later..._

"What in bloody blazes did they do to my hair?"

Michael, griping about his relatively flat-top hair style, and David, whose pin-straight mullet-reminiscent mop was being unsuccessfully fluffed by David's fingers, were only two of the three guys who returned to the makeup room post-show. David and Michael didn't really care that much about their hair or makeup as much as they did about getting a Sprite out of at least one of the ever-present Coca-Cola machines. This particular room was the only one they had seen so far that carried Sprite, even though Sprite was a Coca-Cola-produced product. They guessed the green can didn't complement the red walls, red decorations, and red furniture backstage — too much of a Christmas-y vibe.

Danny Noriega was the third person in the room, and he didn't really care about the Sprite.

"I think a little tyke sat on my head at some point and I was unaware of it."

"Michael, it's not that bad." As reassuring as David's words were, his snickers gave away what he was really thinking.

"Yes, well, you're not the one whose head looks like it was sat on by a bloody wombat."

A quick silence enveloped the duo. David's befuddled look spoke his question for him.

"They're marsupials, Dave. Kangaroos, koalas — animals with pouches." It wasn't the first time Michael has to elaborate on his foreign terminology.

"...thanks."

Michael and David departed from the room, Sprites in hand, leaving Noriega alone with his straightening iron.

Of course, they returned to the light. The difference was the room was being occupied by the nine other men in the competition. (Noriega had not followed.) Dread-headed Jason Castro was asleep on one of the longer couches; Chikezie was attempting to vocally jazz up a country number Robbie Carrico was playing on a beat-up acoustic; Jason Yeager and Colton Berry were in deep discussion across the room and were overheard calling the internet-surfing Garrett Haley a "hobbit"; and Davids Hernandez and Archuleta, joined by Luke Menard, were starting a puzzle that was to supposed to end up being a picture of Gandalf the Wizard according to the box, but looked nothing as much when spread about in tiny pieces.

"Light's as bright and shiny as ever, Michael. No flicker."

"Just give it a minute, mate."

Eight minutes roll by. David loosened a crick in his neck, then stifled a yawn as Chikezie, finished revamping Carrico's tune, came over to find out what was catching their attention.

"Hey guys, what's...um...up? Literally?"

"Chicky, watch that light. You'll see it flicker in a moment." Michael took a sip of his warming Sprite.

"I've heard a lot of names, but Chicky hasn't been one of them." A moment of silence and up-turned heads. "Oh, there it is."

David glared at Chikezie. "You did _not_ see it flicker."

"Sure I did. Quick second dim in the light. I know what a flicker is."

David slowly turned his head to Michael, whose face was splashed with a cheeky smile. "Told ya, mate." He took a quick pull from his Sprite as though it was a long-neck bottle. With his input contributed, Chikezie headed over to a Coca-Cola machine on the far wall.

"Michael, _please_ just tell me — are you filling me full of crap?"

"You're either lying about seeing the flicker or you're a lot more blind than you give yourself credit for, mate."

Most of the guys were filing out now, tired from the night's string of performances, criticisms and automatic smiles. The pressure was off, and that relieving of stress made a lot of people sleepy — especially Castro, who had just rounded out his fourth hour that day of snoozing on the couch. Despite the jolt that the Sprite provided him, Michael was slowly falling victim to his exhaustion as well, even though David's unsuccessful attempts to keep his eyes pried open long enough to see the light flicker were just funny enough to keep him from using a nearby bean bag chair as a makeshift bed. After a half hour has passed, Michael felt required to check up on his friend and see how Flicker-watch was going.

"Any luck, mate?"

"I need those little steel prongs they use in that one movie. That weird science experiment thing...with the eyes opened up. You know what I'm talking about?" His hands made prying motions around his eyes.

"Not a clue."

"Oh, come on! It was a huge thing in the eighties...or seventies. One of the two. Weird movie... "

"Any other parts of the movie you remember?"

"I never saw it."

"Well, then, how do you know it was weird if you never saw it?"

"My brother did...or part of it. Freaked him out half-way through it. Damn, what was that called?"

"Weird movie released sometime in a twenty-year span. We should be able to narrow that one down in no time flat, Cook."

"It had a fruit in its title..."

" _A Clockwork Orange_?"

"Yeah, that's it, that's it! I need those...things. The only way I could see this damn flicker you're talking about."

"Or you could stop talking to me about movies from the early seventies and actually pay attention the light."

A quick sneer from David and the two sets of eyes were again focused on the light. Two minutes passed.

The light flickered. David's jaw dropped.

"Told ya, mate."

David moaned in frustration and defeat. The following two days, David kept his eyes on the floor. And Michael laughed.


	2. Whoever Smelt It Dealt It

Originally Published: May 17, 2008  
Top 20 Contestants  
Theme: 1970s  


  


Oh, sure. Everyone's all smiles in the picture. Well, everyone except Michael, anyway. David's already begun to tease him about the lack of pearly whites in his photos, throwing out various comments along the lines of "Haven't put in your dentures today, Mike?" Even as the eldest contestant in the group, Mike did appreciate the denture joke, but it lost its novelty after David told it to the contestants and crew for the ninth time.

Anyway, back to the picture. The remaining twenty contestants are gathered on and around a Coca-Cola-bottle-printed couch, posing in their crisp suits and Go-Go-reminiscent outfits. Four people were missing from the picture: Joanne Borgella, Amy Davis, "Hobbit" Haley and his nick-namer Colton Berry, who were the first four eliminations from the competition. But the remaining contestants sailed through the '70s theme with only a few tripping over their bell-bottoms along the way.

But behind the smiles was a striking fear.

Don't worry — it wasn't like one of those teen movies with random murders and a killer with Halloween masks. Nothing like that. It was simply a fear of...smell.

Somebody had cut the cheese, and no one knew who it was.

It lingered, too, which, from the photographer's point-of-view, helped rule out several of the possible culprits. The girls with the unnecessary dashes in their names, Alexandréa Lushington and Asia'h Epperson, had their noses crinkled in eighty percent of their photos, which would be too guilty a reaction for the original gasser; hair product sharers Ramiele Malubay and Danny Noriega were giggling and whispering to each other with relatively repulsed looks on their faces; David Hernandez's attempt at flirting with Alaina Whitaker abruptly stopped, and not because she was more interested in cuddling Jason Castro, who was twitching his nose in interest like a puppy; Carly Smithson, who was originally leaning on the far left end of the sofa, was now leaning far, far away from the sofa, unintentionally cutting herself out of the picture; Luke Menard took it upon himself to coax Carly back into the picture, but eventually ended up joining her outside the picture's frame; Brooke White kept looking over her shoulder at Chikezie, who, upon receiving the accusatory looks, also began to notice Syesha Mercado's similar expressions; Kady Malloy and the Cruise Ship Yeager continued acted normally, save the two fingers they used to pin their noses closed; and Robbie Carrico, Kristy Lee Cook, and Amanda Overmyer kept as still as statues with their eyes enlarged to the size of saucers.

Only three of the contestants were acting irregularly to the noxious fumes: Michael Johns, who continued his GQ-esque pose with the lacking smile; David Cook, who kept looking around anxiously and scratching the back of his head; and David Archuleta, who just couldn't stop giggling.

Asked Brooke, "Archie, what are you giggling so much about?"

Archuleta momentarily stopped, stared innocently into Brooke's eyes, then began his adorable little kid laugh once again. This gradually caused a chain reaction of laughs from the surrounding females, who, through their big-grinned guffaws, quietly pinned Archie as the perpetrator of the crowd-affecting fart.

Brooke's experience of dealing with unruly children as a nanny was put into play as she further interrogated Archuleta.

"David, why are you laughing? What has got you so tickled?"

Archuleta began gripping his stomach because of his continuous stream of laughter.

Syesha allied with Brooke and inquired, "Archie, what is it?"

After a moment more of unbreakable cackling, Archuleta slowly turned his head to his right and, with two fingers, simultaneously pointed at the lackadaisical Michael Johns, who was resting his arms on the couch and looking around in a state of disinterest, and David Cook, who was slowly pacing back and forth within the two-foot space he had behind the couch.

Michael saw Archie's pointing first and immediately retorted with "What?" This non-descript gem of conversation perked Cook's ears, who sidled up to his place behind the couch and twitched at Archie's denunciatory digit.

"Why are you pointing at me?"

A few more giggles fall from Archuleta's mouth. "One of you did it."

"Did what, mate?" Michael's eyebrows furled together. Cook's Adam's apple rolled in response to a nervous gulp.

The slightly-disgruntled-but-ultimately-amused photographer stepped in to respond. "Cut the cheese, break wind, let one rip, stepped on a duck — do I need to be more specific?"

Archuleta hadn't heard the duck one before, and commenced to laugh even harder.

Nonchalantly, Michael stood up, tucked his thumbs in his pants pockets and asked, "You think I released some barking spiders, mate?"

Now it was Cook's turn to laugh. Between gasps of air, he inquired, "Barking spiders??? What...what the hell are those?!?"

"You've never heard of barking spiders, mate? Little Australian critters that hiss when you bother them. A sort of slang for a good bottom burp."

Archuleta fell forward on the floor because of his laughing; he rolled on his back, gripped his stomach and continued to roar. Cook leaned against the back wall and clapped at Michael's fart nicknames.

Amidst the laughs, Kristy Lee braved an unasked query.

"Ummm... _did_ either of you...uhh...do it?"

Michael's and Cook's smiles subsided and Archuleta's cramp-inducing giggling momentarily ceased in anticipation of a response.

Several moments passed, each heightening the tension and increasing the guilt evident in Cook's eyes. But Michael used his humor to break the silence.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you no, anyway. So I won't say anything at all."

Cook loudly snickered, but abruptly quit upon meeting Kristy Lee's suspicious eyes. From there, his face was painted with an expression of horror.

"David...?"

"No!"

Kristy jumped, but recovered by quickly approaching him and trapping him against the wall. "David...look me in the eye and tell me the truth."

"Which eye?"

Archuleta began his giggling once more.

"David...!"

"I didn't do it!"

"In the eyes, David!"

"Where did you think I was looking last time? Your ears?!?!"

Kristy sighed in frustration and stomped past David towards the other side of the set, much to the dismay of the photographer, who had long since recovered from the fart slang humor and was now as serious as ever.

"Wait...Kristy! We've still got to do the shot, regardless of who's passing gas!"

Michael and Davids Cook and Archuleta joined together for a group fit of roars.

After a moment of hesitation, Kristy returned to her spot behind the sofa, standing between Robbie Carrico and David Cook, who she occasionally eyeballed out of frustration. Brooke helped Asia'h in getting Archuleta off the ground and onto the sofa, following it up with a quick hand dusting of his suit and straightening of his slick-backed hair.

While the photographer was straightening the tripod for his camera, Michael coughed and mumbled something under his breath. Carly looked over her shoulder and asked, "What was that, Michael?"

"I...mmmmhhh...hmm..." A deep straightening of his throat followed.

He had acquired the attention of his surrounding contestants now, with Luke, Robbie, Kristy, David-cubed, Amanda, and Jason as an audience to his muffled squabbles.

With a smile on his lips, David Cook said, "Repeat that, Mikey?"

"I...I did it."

The photographer put his forefinger on the button of his camera and said, "Smile, everyone!" The camera beeped, flashed, and captured the top 20 in all of their performance glory.

Three seconds passed. Then Robbie and Carly together gave Michael a double slap upside his head. And Archie laughed.


End file.
